Well this was odd news as I had thought Mixamo was something that was left to die by Adobe. However they’ve just done a pretty substantial update to the site, adding a lot of new characters and animations.
In this blog post they specifically mention that because the are ending Adobe Fuse, they’ve reinvested in Mixamo to provide 3D characters to users.
https://theblog.adobe.com/an-update-on-adobe-fuse-as-adobe-moves-to-the-future-of-3d-ar-development/
For context, “Adobe Fuse” started life as “Mixamo Fuse” a bit before they were acquired by Adobe. In other words, it was the character creation portion of Mixamo.
Really early on I recall Mixamo had a very simple character creator tool built in, but it wasn’t their own, it was just licensed from elsewhere.
It’s unfortunate that Fuse is being discontinued, as it’s half of the value of the Mixamo suite. To me the value has always been the ability to create and animate a custom character without requiring dedicated staff or outsourcing. I’m still glad to have the animation half covered, but getting a character created in the first place is still a big deal.
Are there other solutions which address that effectively these days? I haven’t had to work with human characters in a while, but projects on the drawing board very much need them…
So… aside from adding a bunch of pre-made characters, what has their update to Mixamo included? I haven’t used it for a while, so maybe my memory is just too vague to spot the differences. From a quick search I’m also not spotting much in the way of new or updated animations compared to last time I used it, though it’s entirely possible their attention has been in different parts of the library.
I honestly thought they’d fold the Mixamo site up. Them returning to it, polishing it up and maintaining it as a separated entity makes me slightly more hopeful for what they do regarding the separation of Substance from the Adobe monolith.
#RIP Adobe
Did you not read any of the above? Its the opposite, what people thought was dead one of the most useful services, mixamo, is back. Very much not RIP.
The guys at substance who are now leading the team have spoken at length on (substance) forums about how there is a ton of stuff in the mix for mixamo incoming. This was a while ago and everyone said “mixamo is dead your lieing” and now this has come. I imagine as substance integrates with CC more and more will come to mixamo. I also know that adobe and substance know there is a need for character creation, and I imagine there will be an alternative. In the meantime you can use alternatives like poser etc.
Thanks for the clarification Issac, #RIP Adobe 
There is a huge industry gap for accessible, easy character creation for indies. Daz studio makes excellent characters with too high polyncounts and expensive and confusing game licensing. Character creator looks great if you are on PC. Morph 3d promised easy characters a few years ago but has locked up and changed into Tafi. There’s a huge opportunity here if someone can come along and give us a simple flexible solution.
I checked out mixamo and the animations seem the same. Not complaining because I find them very useful and love how that was setup. There are a bunch of new characters which seem to fall mostly into urban design characters , and between a standard fuse look and stylized exaggerated form characters. Most look like they were made in fuse.
I’m guessing based on the blog post which is welcome but doesn’t promise anything concrete that these characters were made in fuse and are a kindnoff mini gift to comfort mixamo users that more is in the way.
The blog post does worry me though because it leads off with talk of branding and marketing opportunities, rather than about innovation and user friendliness. This is where flash went and it helped kill it. It’s also where the really cool looking morph3d language went as it closed up and switch to the Tafi branding.
I think substance has clever and modern design team so I hope they are able to run free with what they have planned, but there is definitely an opportunity here for software that takes game designers first and not marketing execs/experiences.
Coincidentally I was reading this in another tab
https://benedikt-kuenzel.com/2018/06/24/cheap-and-realistic-characters-for-indy-games/
That pivot makes me wonder what their data showed. i would think an avatar market would be tiny compared to general character creator.
Mixamo never truly went anywhere. There might have been a period where it wasn’t available as the company was being bought out by Adobe but other than that it was available for use.
Their target markets seems to have changed from broad devs to more niche, larger companies m
Welp, its been a year now. Doesn’t see to be any different, to me at least.
Lol, its been 2020. Its literally been the biggest pandemic with shutdowns across the world, I dont think its been a normal working year. There also was at no point anywhere where I or anyone else said “in a year this stuff is coming out”.
Its in development, and you are welcome to reach out to substances team to ask about this stuff - they are very open about this sort of stuff and talk about it at length on their forums too.
It seems Unreal’s not waiting. I have a colleague who is switching because of Metahuman. Hopefully, Unity will have an answer to that.
They won’t, metahuman will export to unity, unreal isn’t competing with unity, they are competing with a bigger fish, steam, to do that they need dev and gamer, to be happy on their store, so they use the fortnite money to subsidize dev tools to make quality game and gamers’ backlog to lock them into their infrastructure with free game.
Basically they follow the money, there is no money in competing against unity, because unity don’t make money.
This would violate the license. Metahuman is “UE-Only Content”
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/mhc